The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Monument[1] commemorates Union Army soldiers and sailors who served in the American Civil War. It is located at 89th Street and Riverside Drive in Riverside Park in the Upper West Side of New York City. It was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1902.
The white marble monument was designed after a public competition by architects Charles and Arthur Stoughton. The ornamental features were carved by Paul E. Duboy (1857–1907) who also was the architect of The Ansonia, an apartment building also on the Upper West Side. The monument takes the form of a peripteral Corinthian temple raised on a high base, with a tall cylindrical rusticated cella, that carries a low conical roof like a lid, ringed by twelve Corinthian columns. Plinths at the entrance to the raised terrace are incised with the names of the New York volunteer regiments and the battles in which they served, as well as Union generals. The monument measures approximately 29 meters tall.
It stands at the center of a complex sequence of balustraded formal paved terraces and stairs that rationalize the steep natural slopes to north and west.[2] Its siting at a curve in Riverside Drive makes it visible from a distance, a desirable feature for a monument in the City Beautiful movement, of which this Beaux-Arts monument is a prime example.
Its distant forebear is the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, to which it has interposed an attic with sculptured eagles and a base with banded rustication.
The interior, open one day annually at Openhousenewyork, is entirely revetted with the same veined white marble used on the exterior. It is in two stages, with six niches in the lower stage, corresponding to the exterior basement and an upper stage of tall Corinthian pilasters flanking plain panels; above is a ribbed interior dome with a central lantern. The floor is a mosaic star centered on a bronze relief medallion of the US arms, with crossed oak and laurel sprays.
Since 2004, the monument has served as the home of the Hudson Warehouse theatre company.[3]
The colonnade carries an entablature adorned with a full frieze containing the inscriptions "To the memory of the Brave Soldiers and Sailors Who Saved the Union," A cresting of eagles alternating with cartouches surmounts the cornice. The monument terminates in a low conical roof crowned by a richly decorated marble finial.
The New York Landmark Commission designated the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument a landmark in 2001.[4]